In general, an air cleaner refers to a device for drawing in polluted indoor air, purifying it, and emitting it into the indoor atmosphere.
Recent air cleaners not only collect dust and microorganisms, but also remove odor when purifying indoor air.
FIG. 1 shows the internal structure of a conventional air cleaner.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional air cleaner includes a body 10, a filter assembly 30 positioned inside the body 10 near the front and provided with various filters stacked on one another, a drawing device (not shown) positioned inside the body 10 near the back to guide drawn and emitted air, and a front panel 20 for selectively exposing the front surface inside the body 10.
Indoor air is drawn into the body 10 via an air inlet 11 formed on a lateral surface of the body 10, and passes through the filter assembly 30 and the drawing device successively. Purified air is emitted into the indoor atmosphere via an air outlet 12 formed on the upper surface of the body 10.
The body 10 has a dust sensor unit 13 positioned therein to sense the amount of dust collected by the filter assembly 30.
However, the conventional air cleaner has a problem in that a large amount of dust is filtered out of the indoor air and is accumulated on the surface of one of the filter bodies constituting the filter assembly 30, which is positioned near the air inlet. This requires frequent cleaning.
As a result, a filter for removing dust is necessarily used as the filter body of the filter assembly, which is positioned near the air inlet.
Particularly, when particles of larger sizes are drawn in, they adhere to the surface of the filter body and substantially degrade the air-drawing efficiency.
When the entire filter assembly 30 is separated from the body of the air cleaner to remove dust from the surface of the filter body, dust may be scattered and pollute the indoor atmosphere.